I knew I should have read the whole article.
Back in the early 70's I worked for an arm of the government and on second shift, my son was born and was all screwed up on his times for about 3 months where I had like a couple of hours sleep and could not function at work, he only slept during the day and my employer at first fought the idea of my switching to first shift for awhile but ended up for a couple of months to work first and my wife was home with him.
When I owned a small business in the 80's with about 13 employee's I didn't pay for time off but helped them with meals if they needed time off.
I can see a fully paid family leave act would have many abuses. I could go to my doctor tomorrow and have him write an excuse for any one of medical problems and take family leave if I was an employee.
I think a lot of employers would be empathetic under special circumstances (assuming they are not bound by stringent union contracts) and try to work with an employee who is worth keeping around. I worked for one who would pay women a month if they were out with a pregnancy for instance, and then they could use whatever vacation/personal time they had banked, and would let women who wanted to part time their way back to full time work after that if need be. Of course, that sort of got all fouled up by a man who demanded he was being discriminated against because he had to use his personal days if he wanted off when his baby was born.